When the parlour-door shut behind Sir Jekyl, his face darkened. "I know it's some stupid thing," he thought, as he walked down the gallery with rapid steps, toward the study, the sharp air agitating, as he did so, his snowy necktie and glossy curls.
"How d'ye do, Mr. Pelter?—very happy to see you. I had not a notion it was you—the stupid fellow gave me quite another name. Quite well, I hope?"
"Quite well, Sir Jekyl, I thank you—a—quite well," said the attorney, a stoutish, short, wealthy-looking man, with a massive gold chain, a resolute countenance, and a bullet head, with close-cut greyish hair.
Pelter was, indeed, an able, pushing fellow, without Latin or even English grammar, having risen in the office from a small clerkship, and, perhaps, was more useful than his gentlemanlike partner.
"Well—a—well, and what has brought you down here? Very glad to see you, you know; but you would not run down for fun, I'm afraid," said Sir Jekyl.
"Au—no—au, well, Sir Jekyl, it has turned out, sir—by gad, sir, I believe them fellows are in England, after all!"
"What do you mean by them fellows?" said Sir Jekyl, with a very dark look, unconsciously repeating the attorney's faulty grammar.
"Strangways and Deverell, you know—I mean them—Herbert Strangways, and a young man named Deverell—they're in England, I've been informed, very private—and Strangways has been with Smith, Rumsey, and Snagg—the office—you know; and there is something on the stocks there."
As the attorney delivered this piece of intelligence he kept his eye shrewdly on Sir Jekyl, rather screwed and wrinkled, as a man looks against a storm.
"Oh!—is that all? There's nothing very alarming, is there, in that?—though, d—— me, I don't see, Mr. Pelter, how you reconcile your present statement with what you and your partner wrote to me twice within the last few weeks."